Four middle-aged (Gen X, ages 38-41) fathers, middle class, each making between $28k and $43k a year, three of us college educated, two of us college grads, and between us we have eight kids (10 if you count stepkids). Two black, two white. All four of us found ourselves doing something none of us could have predicted a year ago, and something that would be unthinkable a century ago. We were all campaigning - hard - for a Democratic candidate for president. Who happens to be black. In the deep South.

One of us is a pragmatic libertarian (me). Two are generally apolitical types who have only voted sporadically over the course of their lives, and then usually for whichever candidate didn't seem as bad as the other. One is a registered Democrat who grew up in the bowels of the Rust Belt, and who voted whichever way his unionised dad did, when he bothered. Of the four, only one (me) has ever donated to a campaign.

We're the Obama Dads. And we're fired up.

We discovered each other in the parking lot of a local café one morning, and started a conversation when we were mutually admiring our shiny new Obama '08 bumper stickers. I'm the closest to a real political junkie among us, having run unsuccessfully as a paper candidate for state Senate on the libertarian ticket once. The others are fairly apolitical. One had a family heavily involved in the civil rights movement, but he's a long way from where his parents were.

What is important about us? We were apolitical. Now we're fired up for Obama, and we're sacrificing everything from sports (college basketball, mostly) and other fun dad activities in favour of going out and talking to people about Barack. We're determined. We're dedicated. We're not officially part of any campaign. Oh, we cop stuff from the Obama website all the time, but most of our arguments and talking points are completely home grown. But we have raised some money for the campaign, between the four of us - not much, I admit. A couple of mortgage payments worth. That might not seem like much, compared to traditional Washington standards but we're new at this and pretty pleased with the result. Hell, a few weeks ago we didn't even know each other.

We were all moved by the Senator's much maligned "rhetoric", finding within his words a sense of purpose and inspiration that we had heretofore only witnessed among the True Believers in the GOP when they talked about Bush and Armageddon and such. Oh, all of us hate the war, mourn our liberties, and despise the idiot currently in the White House. We probably would have voted against the GOP candidate just out of disgust. But none of us had ever considered becoming politically active. We're Dads, after all. Who has the time?

For you childless folks out there, let me dispel a myth about modern fatherhood. We're involved with our children's lives in ways that our dads never were. Modern life demands it in a two-parent teamwork oriented household. I know my kids' shoe sizes, social security numbers, and blood types. I suspect my Dad forgets my middle name sometimes. We all have wives, we all have jobs, and we all have our share of baggage. We've all got better things to do than mess around with politics.

Yet for three weekends in a row, now, we've gone out, together and alone, and hit whichever large informal gathering we can. And we've started talking to other dads about Barack. Not because we hate Hillary (although I'm not a fan). But because we see Barack Obama, and we see a way to fight for our kids' future in a way that Hillary just doesn't inspire. And the other Dads are listening. We've found quite a few formerly apolitical Obama Dads, and encouraged them to start their own informal groups. We don't ask them to join anything. That's not what this is about. We ask them to consider the merits of the candidates, consider the future, and think about their kids. That's all.

We've gotten tremendous response. Most of the guys we talk to are primed for this kind of fresh air, and secretly pine for a fresh start for the political process. We've found die-hard conservatives fed up with the GOP, moderate independents who have been looking for a way through the usual Coke versus Pepsi "choice" traditionally offered by American politics, and liberal guys uncomfortable with the stands that Hillary Clinton has taken on a variety of subjects. It doesn't take them much to get fired up, and once we point them to a few websites we back off and let them forge ahead on their own. Again, it's not about joining an organization - it's about finding the courage to see past the white papers and the blatant manipulation to the real meat of the matter: our kids.

We kicked in $100 each recently to send two of us to South Carolina to help campaign. When they returned we had an impromptu celebration, with hugs and smiles and high-fives like we were all on the same softball team. I mean, I abhor the typical male sports metaphor, but that's the way it felt. We were a team. Hillary doesn't inspire a "team" mentality. Edwards, while much admired, didn't inspire a "team" mentality in us. We'd probably have voted for him - three of us did, when he ran for the Senate in North Carolina - but we wouldn't campaign for him.

Our wives are largely behind us. But all four of them are mystified by this magnetic hold that Obama has on us. They even make jokes about homoerotic tendencies and male bonding. We grin good-naturedly and bear it and keep going on out there, every chance we get. Not just campaigning, but testifying. It's a heady experience. A few weeks ago we were strangers who happened to go to the same café. Now we're a Team.

Why are we suddenly so committed? There were a lot of compelling reasons, some of them not even related to the candidate at all. We've all been waiting for someone to come along and do something about the chump in chief for years, since we came of age under the spectre of the Reagan administration. We've been waiting patiently for someone to talk some sense into the country, abandon partisanship and polarization, and get on with the pragmatic business of running our lives in pursuit of happiness. We hemmed and hawed and attempted to distill our profound feelings about this matter in an easy-to-communicate fashion. And it came down to something very simple.

Watching Obama up on stage with his family and the way he acted towards them, that was what did it. If you see Chelsea and Hillary together in the same room, it leaves you cold. You see John Edwards and his family, you have no doubt that he is committed to them, and they him, especially in the face of a potentially terminal illness and you feel a strong empathy with him. But when you see Obama and his wife and kids, you feel like he'll do anything and everything in his power to protect and care for them.

There is no insincerity in his voice as he thanks his hard-working wife and his poor daughters who haven't seen their Daddy in a week. There was honest adoration when he blew off campaigning on the eve of Nevada's important caucus and took his wife out to dinner on her birthday. Obama is the original Obama Dad, a strong, wise, inspirational figure - the kind of father we try our damnedest to be every day.

But he isn't trying to do it for us. He is inviting us to participate in his journey, to assist him on his quest, not because he's personally ambitious (we know he is, and we respect and admire it for what it is) but because he is willing and eager to take his personal strength and power and charisma and ask us to contribute our own to the cause. He isn't just asking us for our support and our money and our vote, he is asking us to rise up and join him.

And after dissecting every speech and policy paper, investigating all the mud that flies out but doesn't stick, after seeing him coolly face off the powerful forces arrayed against him - and still have time to thank his family and supporters and mean every damn word of it - we believe that with our help, he can affect change on a monumental scale. He can wipe away the politics of division that have plagued the political domain since we were all kids. He can achieve the first real political mandate since Reagan, and do something effective with it. He can talk to an honest Republican and find some place in the middle where neither side feels compromised.

We've waited a long time for this. We aren't going to let this opportunity slip away, allow a potential revolution get hijacked by crude and rude political dynasty with a sense of entitlement. We don't want another eight years reliving the 1990s. We want someone in charge who, like us, has a vested interest in our children's future.

And someone, like us, who would walk over hot coals to get their kid a glass of water.